Enrolled Agent???

[mwrightea]

@BulldogTom - Long replies wanted. Thanks for all that info. I like hearing about everyone's stories as I am still undecided where to take my qualifications / profession next. They are all helping.

@Lion - I was looking at the Gleim website this morning and got side tracked with other things. This is definitely something I'm going to look into further. On-line classes, exams, instructors would be the best way to go for me right now anyway.

One other item not mentioned for EA is that you are not limited by state like a CPA. Enrolled Agents can practice nationwide.

[jainen]

>>looking at the Gleim website<<

ALL study courses use exactly the same basic material--prior year exams. You can get everything for free the same way Gleim does, on the tax pro section of the IRS web site. (Commercial courses add commentary of uncertain quality, none of it endorsed by the Office of Professional Responsibility, and housekeeping material like scheduling which might be valuable to unmotivated candidates.)

As I said in my last post on the previous page, I think everyone should take the exam. But save the hundreds of dollars Gleim demands and buy some genuine reference material. When you look up the answer yourself, that's the best way to learn. And who needs some stupid book bag anyway?

[taxguy057]

>>really don't now how to get more clients<<

I must say, TG, that if a college degree in business management didn't cover marketing, the fundamental business issue, then you should go back and work on that subject prior to adding new credentials to your name.

Apparently this is not the best forum for Enrolled Agent cheerleaders--let me pick up the pom poms. North, South, East, West. EA's, EA's, we're the best!

In my opinion, nobody who enjoys tax work should skip this important step, even if one were already an attorney or CPA. Enrolled Agent is the ONLY designation available for a tax specialist. It can certainly open doors for you. You yourself mentioned representation before the IRS. (Let me add that an EA can even be admitted to practice in Tax Court!) But you aren't going to jump into that career without some serious on-the-job guidance, and nobody is going to give you an apprenticeship without proof that you are serious.

Finally, here's a new reason for you. A number of states have already successfully implemented some form of tax preparer registration or licensing. You can expect the IRS to follow. In California, EA's are exempt from state registration. (Actually "state" registration is a euphemism for a program administered by, well, certain corporations in the industry.) Do it, Tax Guy!

Apparently i was sleep in mgkt class! lol! I have done flyers around town so we'll see what comes of it. I do offer mobile service where i'll go to client or meet at a starbucks or panera's so maybe that will be a niche i'll fill. most new clients come from referals, but just wanted to know if anyone had something they do different to approach the general public more...

[taxguy057]

David explained it short & sweet.

TayGuy, I've found the best way to get more clients is to ask my current clients, the ones I love best, to recommend me to people like them. Then I get more clients like the ones I love. Give them lots of business cards, so they pass them along. Make sure everyone you know knows that you are accepting new clients. I get good clients at church and from my broker and at Curves, as well as from my current clients.

CCH makes use of Execusite to build websites for tax preparers. Up and running with no effort on your part, but you can easily make changes at any time. And, content changes the first of each month to keep things fresh even when you're busy with tax season. DollarsSense.com

Kyle, NAEA runs an EA study course using Gleim materials and an on-line instructor. I've heard good things about it.

For anyone still at HRB, make sure you take their EA study course before you leave. In fact, take every course you can while you have the chance. Just the books alone are worth more than the $20 charge. When you find a good instructor, take everything they teach. Block's on-line courses are by CCH.

@lion

Do i have to be an employee of HR to take the EA course? that would be conflict of interest b/c i will be taken all the clients i do for them with me!! lol!

[Lion EA]

NAEA.org has the on-line course taught by an instructor; uses Gleim materials.

Yes, you can get everything free from the IRS, also. What you won't get is explanations of why an answer was right or wrong. Lots of questions on basis, so read all the IRS pubs re basis, depreciation, disposition of assets, etc. Maybe study with a buddy. Allow time to get a feel for the way the test is given. (Is it still no calculators? I was doing long division on scratch paper!)

[taxguy057]

@virtual

So i have thought about the website deal, but do you think that works with tax prep since so many people see HR, JH & Liberty on every street corner. dont see where it will help a small no name like me. maybe i underestimate the power of the net.... :unsure:

[Lion EA]

I've had people hear about me and then look me up on the web. Since I don't have a storefront or public office (work from home), a potential client can do a "drive by" look at me on my web site. Hopefully, they can get to know me a bit on my site. I've had people lose my contact information and find me on the web, also. I really need to post a picture of me, I guess.

I'm also listed on NAEA.org and whatever QB has for finding a QB ProAdvisor and another place or two. I do get calls from them, but often price shopping. However, since it doesn't cost me anything to list when I'm a member, I have nothing to lose.

[Virtual Managed Solutions]

@taxguy057 - I think it wouldn't hurt. I know when I personally hear about a business I always research them online first. Even when I'm trying to find a phone number for anyone, I always search the web. Plus, if you wanted to advertise locally, you could always put your web address right into the ad and it gives everyone a chance to do their research before hand. The web is the future and I feel that futurally (my new made-up word of the day) everything, even taxes, will all be web based at some point. The way the world is going now-a-days, it only makes sense.

[taxguy057]

@lion

whats ur website address? Like to do a cyber-drive by! lol

@virtual

I will look into website for next season...you need to be up and running so you can give me a quote! lol!

[Lion EA]

DollarsSense.com

Enjoy the ride!

[Lion EA]

500 :read:

[Catherine]

WOW! Thx Cat! You been great help and hopefully as i take my journey to EA bliss, I can call on your help again if i hit a pitfall???!!!

Yes, of course.

[Bart]

I've had people hear about me and then look me up on the web. Since I don't have a storefront or public office (work from home), a potential client can do a "drive by" look at me on my web site. Hopefully, they can get to know me a bit on my site. I've had people lose my contact information and find me on the web, also. I really need to post a picture of me, I guess.

I'm also listed on NAEA.org and whatever QB has for finding a QB ProAdvisor and another place or two. I do get calls from them, but often price shopping. However, since it doesn't cost me anything to list when I'm a member, I have nothing to lose.

I have gotten referrals from people I would refer to. Examples are my payroll company contacts, Lawyers, Bankers, Insurance People and other professionals.

[Catherine]

So, I'm gathering in all this information (which I find very useful, BTW) and I'm coming to the conclusion that you don't need to go back to college to get your EA or CPA credentials? How does one get started in becoming an EA? I saw the link above to the Gleim website and I'm going to check that out, but if anyone else could offer more advice on where to start, I'd appreciate it. What are some of your battle stories - what made you want to get into taxes? What are the ups and downs of being an EA/CPA?

I covered some of this in my earlier message, but will try to fill in the blanks. My dad was an accountant -- not HIS first choice. He wanted to go to medical school and even did his first year , when WW2 intervened. By the time that was over, he didn't want/couldn't go back (I don't know the details). And somehow he ended up in accounting. I literally do not recall _not_ knowing how to keep a double-entry ledger. (I was the stereotypical "Why do you do that?" kid.)

I left home just before I was 17 and ended up putting myself through college. Found AccounTemps through a sign on the subway and went and talked to them. I guess I sounded knowledgeable enough; they put me to work one summer. Worked at a cable TV station in Boston in the mid-70's for the business manager. She was overwhelmed with having had a missing assistant for a couple of _months_ at that point, and dumped all the books for the station in my lap and came back a week later and asked how it was going!!! Talk about baptism by fire! It was a paper One-Write system that I figured out by "deriving from first principles" as they said back in my engineering days. I still remember my hands shaking like a leaf when I used the PayMaster check writer to write out the check for the TV transmitter - $13,000+ every two weeks, in a year where my tuition at MIT _for the full year_ was $3,000. I was all of 18 at the time. I worked for them that summer, and went back the next summer as well.

Got my engineering degree just in time to graduate in the middle of the 1979 - 1981 recession and the only engineering job offer I got was in southern Texas. So it was back to AccounTemps until I got a job in my field about 6 months later. And back again when they laid off my department a year after that. And again when the next company went out of business after I'd been there ~ 2 years. And again after I got fired for discovering my boss and my office mate were having an affair (not that I _told_ anyone; I just knew and therefore I had to go). I had six engineering jobs in 12 years, with several-month periods of unemployment (HELLO, AccounTemps!, it's me again) between. At that point, I wised up and decided that accountants always have work.

Worked for a CPA for a while and found out from him that to get a CPA required more college. Blech. Didn't want that. Tried financial planning but since I'm no good at the hard sell, I didn't earn too much. But lots of my planning clients would say, essentially, "this is all well and good, but now I need someone to help me with my accounting and taxes".

Ended up going out on my own with an accounting and bookkeeping business in mid-1997, and here I am almost twelve years later. I have NEVER been laid off since I left engineering, and what I do helps people every day. And to my own surprise, I enjoy it (for the most part). It's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, and depending on how I choose to put the pieces together, it makes a different picture. So I can pick the pattern that does my client the most good both now and going forward.

YES, it can get crazy at tax time. You can control that by limiting the number of returns you do and being quick to put people on extension. You can also hire more help, if you want to grow your business that way. I've chosen to limit my business, although now that I have one girl out of high school and the other mid-high-school, I find I have more time to work and expanded my business about 50% last year. I could grow it even more on the word "BOO" if I tried, but I figure I'll let this level settle down for another year and see how much more I want to grow. One consideration is that my husband will be taking early retirement in another couple of years, and I may need to be CFO of his consulting firm. More accounting!

Catherine

[Catherine]

Apparently i was sleep in mgkt class! lol! I have done flyers around town so we'll see what comes of it. I do offer mobile service where i'll go to client or meet at a starbucks or panera's so maybe that will be a niche i'll fill. most new clients come from referals, but just wanted to know if anyone had something they do different to approach the general public more...

The local advertising I do is in a little freebie paper mailed to all households in my town and the surrounding three or four. It doesn't cost too much and brings about 3 - 5 people a year. If they're nice folks, I ask for referrals. It's slow to start, but then the referrals start to snowball.

[Catherine]

I've had people hear about me and then look me up on the web. Since I don't have a storefront or public office (work from home), a potential client can do a "drive by" look at me on my web site. Hopefully, they can get to know me a bit on my site. I've had people lose my contact information and find me on the web, also. I really need to post a picture of me, I guess.

I'm also listed on NAEA.org and whatever QB has for finding a QB ProAdvisor and another place or two. I do get calls from them, but often price shopping. However, since it doesn't cost me anything to list when I'm a member, I have nothing to lose.

I have gotten a _lot_ of good business referred to me by bookkeepinghelp.com -- and a year is roughly $200 -- or what my little local paper charges for four one-shot ads Jan-Apr.

[Gail in Virginia]

I think that most of our new clients come from word of mouth. Have you tried telling your current 100 clients that you are interested in expanding your business, and asking them to refer their friends and neighbors, particularly anyone who needs year-round bookkeeping services? You might also talk to any clients whose current bookkeeping is a mess because they are too busy running their business to do the bookkeeping and see if they would like to hire you to do it for them.

I agree with jainen that if you are serious about taxes, there is no better certification than the EA designation, and the day is coming when some sort of certification will be required. That said, there are a lot of tax preparers with no certification who take the business quite seriously and work hard to keep up and I don't believe, even though I am an EA, that we have any corner on integrity, training or ability. We do, however, have some evidence that at least at one time we knew quite a bit about federal taxes.

[taxguy057]

@lion

I like the website! Very clean in professional.....and wow! you do all the hard stuff too! U DA Man!!!

[jainen]

>>What you won't get is explanations of why an answer was right or wrong.<<

This is basically the only difference between a $600 course and free self-study so lets' examine it. I remain skeptical, though someone who hasn't studied marketing (like our erstwhile drowsy business student) might get a different understanding of the value of such commercial appeals.

We can be under no illusion that the Gleim author's sense of right and wrong has any particular relationship to how the test is developed. Gleim offers no special insight not readily available in expanded format from any standard tax guide with a good index. One might assume an efficiency in skipping the index and going right to the particular question, but -- hello? --they change the questions each year!

Anybody who graduated from an American high school should have enough experience taking tests to recognize how the EA exam is constructed. Multiple choice questions are easy because the correct answer is right in front of you. Wrong answers fall into only a few categories. First, there are math errors like decimal points. A $600 analysis won't help at all with that; you must double-check your work. (Sorry, Catherine, I can't endorse the "Once done, it was over" approach to math calculations.)

Then there are theory errors. You might forget, for example, that commercial property has a different depreciation than residential. But focusing on that answer may trip you up. Next year they might invert the question, asking about residential with commercial being wrong. Might. Might not. If the right answer doesn't instantly leap off the page at you, spend a little time with the Quickfinder Depreciation Handbook until you feel completely comfortable about the whole picture.

Oh, Catherine mentioned that Gleim points out ambiguous questions. Who cares? IRS fixes those every year, and any new ones don't count in the score anyway. Just another reason not to focus on individual questions.

[Lion EA]

Jainen is right, as usual. Especially now when you don't have to wait a whole year to take another part (or retake). If you've been working at tax prep for awhile, you might want to focus your efforts on one or more parts and just take them to see your score. If you pass, you're done. If you don't, hopefully you'll have some idea of your weak areas and know what to study before you make another appointment.

I was with Block and took their course at no additional cost since I was always taking lots of Block courses. I had an outstanding instructor and the texts were great.

Before Prometrics, the questions came straight from IRS pubs, especially the examples in the pubs. Some more recent test takers can jump in to let us know if that's still the case.

[Catherine]

>>What you won't get is explanations of why an answer was right or wrong.<<

This is basically the only difference between a $600 course and free self-study so lets' examine it. I remain skeptical, though someone who hasn't studied marketing (like our erstwhile drowsy business student) might get a different understanding of the value of such commercial appeals.

We can be under no illusion that the Gleim author's sense of right and wrong has any particular relationship to how the test is developed. Gleim offers no special insight not readily available in expanded format from any standard tax guide with a good index. One might assume an efficiency in skipping the index and going right to the particular question, but -- hello? --they change the questions each year!

Anybody who graduated from an American high school should have enough experience taking tests to recognize how the EA exam is constructed. Multiple choice questions are easy because the correct answer is right in front of you. Wrong answers fall into only a few categories. First, there are math errors like decimal points. A $600 analysis won't help at all with that; you must double-check your work. (Sorry, Catherine, I can't endorse the "Once done, it was over" approach to math calculations.)

Then there are theory errors. You might forget, for example, that commercial property has a different depreciation than residential. But focusing on that answer may trip you up. Next year they might invert the question, asking about residential with commercial being wrong. Might. Might not. If the right answer doesn't instantly leap off the page at you, spend a little time with the Quickfinder Depreciation Handbook until you feel completely comfortable about the whole picture.

Oh, Catherine mentioned that Gleim points out ambiguous questions. Who cares? IRS fixes those every year, and any new ones don't count in the score anyway. Just another reason not to focus on individual questions.

(Sorry, Catherine, I can't endorse the "Once done, it was over" approach to math calculations.) -- Well, I wasn't talking about math errors. For those, double-checking calculations is easy and not a problem. Rather, I was talking about theory or judgment call errors. there's a lot of "well, maybe this, maybe that, what if I look at it this way, does this special case apply" judgment in the test. THOSE are the "don't second guess yourself" places. You can dither yourself into a frenzy of wrong answers by agonizing too long and revisiting stuff over and over.

...ambiguous questions. Who cares? IRS fixes those every year, and any new ones don't count in the score anyway. Not quite. they fix some -- and create others. It seems to be almost a wash, year to year. There are two tricks to remember to keep you from freaking out in the exam (as I saw happen to a couple of people!). #1 -- Read each question VERY carefully -- lots of wrong answers come from jumping to answer the question before you understand it. When I took the securities license tests, the most important thing to do was to read each question carefully, and parse out what they were asking. Conditional triple negatives with inverted syntax will foul up anyone who doesn't take the time to figure out very specifically WHAT is being asked. Ditto on the EA exam -- although it's more the tax details than the syntax. #2 -- Don't get spooked if the question (or the answers provided) don't make sense. You AREN'T (necessarily) in over your head, there ISN'T (probably) some huge area of tax law you don't understand -- you've simply run into another ambiguous question. Someone will protest it, and it will be stricken (or credit will be given for more than one answer).

....but -- hello? --they change the questions each year! However, when you study several years' worth, you start to see patterns in what they ask. The same question will appear in several exams, with details changed. So when you run across one of these in an exam, it feels like familiar territory. Still need to read that question carefully, however!

Catherine

[ed_accountant]

Regarding marketing, you definitely should setup a website. It is well worth the cost. Many people have turned to the web to search for services instead of pulling out the yellow pages.

I have had a website for over 5 yrs and also list myself with bookkeepinghelp.com.

[David1980]

Well, passed the third portion today (in about 45 minutes, the prometric gal was impressed though they probably just fake being impressed if you don't take very long. Hey, get your mind out of the gutter!) Now just to send in my $125 and wait.

[TAXBILLY]

Congrats David, way to go!

taxbilly

[Gail in Virginia]

Congratulations, David!